I’ve been enjoying the latest business wars, “The AOL Time Warner Disaster” which I suppose many of us thought it was pretty messed up at the time. Spoiler alert: it was even more messed up that you imagined!
I was flabbergasted at the time that AOL was valued more than Time Warner. By that point any savvy analysis should have pointed out AOL was very far down the road of being just another ISP rather than a destination in itself, while the Time Warner media assets were much more valuable and relevant then than they are today (and there’s still some value there today).
Total failure of due diligence — on the scale of the Studebaker-Packard merger, or bigger — and every consultant on Time Warner’s side who didn’t advise against it should have been put on a list, never to be trusted again.
Total failure of due diligence — on the scale of the Studebaker-Packard merger, or bigger — and every consultant on Time Warner’s side who didn’t advise against it should have been put on a list, never to be trusted again.